Ena Ladi, a post-doctorate at Cal, listens to her iPod as she arrives at the Downtown Berkeley BART station in Berkeley, Calif. on Tuesday, March 20, 2007. A spike in iPod thefts around the Bay Area, including several in Berkeley the past few months, has prompted BART officials to post warnings to commuters and police officials to set-up sting operations to nab would-be thieves. Despite the warnings Ladi isn't worried about theft. "I've got a really old iPod," Ladi said.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle
**Ena Ladi MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOGRAPHER AND S.F. CHRONICLE/NO SALES - MAGS OUT

Photo: PAUL CHINN

Ena Ladi, a post-doctorate at Cal, listens to her iPod as she...

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Cal junior Marc Merza adjusts the volume on his iPod in downtown Berkeley, Calif. on Tuesday, March 20, 2007. A spike in iPod thefts around the Bay Area, including several in Berkeley the past few months, has prompted BART officials to post warnings to commuters and police officials to set-up sting operatinos to nab would-be thieves.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle
**Marc Merza
Ran on: 03-21-2007
Ena Ladi listens to her iPod at BART's Downtown Berkeley Station. She says she doesn't worry about being robbed.
Ran on: 03-21-2007
Ena Ladi listens to her iPod at BART's Downtown Berkeley Station. She says she doesn't worry about being robbed.

Photo: PAUL CHINN

Cal junior Marc Merza adjusts the volume on his iPod in downtown...

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Danyel Fong of South San Francisco wates for his BART train as has his Ipod on.
With the theft of I pods up BART officials warned riders with a flyer in Feb about the problem.
Tuesday, MARCH 20, 2007 KURT ROGERS/THE CHRONICLE SAN FRANCISCO THE CHRONICLE
KURT ROGERS/THE CHRONICLE .jpg MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE / NO SALES-MAGS OUT

Photo: KURT ROGERS/THE CHRONICLE

Danyel Fong of South San Francisco wates for his BART train as has...

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Marc Merza wears iPod earbuds in downtown Berkeley, Calif. on Tuesday, March 20, 2007. Police say thieves look for the telltale white earbuds to spot their victims. A spike in iPod thefts around the Bay Area, including several in Berkeley the past few months, has prompted BART officials to post warnings to commuters and police officials to set-up sting operatinos to nab would-be thieves.
PAUL CHINN/The Chronicle
**Marc Merza
Ran on: 03-21-2007
Ena Ladi listens to her iPod at BART's Downtown Berkeley Station. She says she doesn't worry about being robbed.
Ran on: 03-21-2007
Ena Ladi listens to her iPod at BART's Downtown Berkeley Station. She says she doesn't worry about being robbed.

The iPod is seemingly everywhere, signature white cords dangling from the ears of riders on buses, students at schools and people walking down the sidewalk.

The digital music players' appeal has also spread among a less desirable element -- thieves.

As the supremely portable devices have spread across the Bay Area, the number of iPod robberies has soared. Listeners, often lost in the music and oblivious to their surroundings, tend not to realize how attractive a casually protected high-tech device worth hundreds of dollars can be to a criminal, police say.

In San Francisco, an increase in iPod robberies over the past two years prompted police to run undercover stings. BART officials have begun placing flyers at stations warning riders that the telltale white earbuds could make them targets for iPod theft.

In Berkeley, police issued a public warning after 16 people were robbed of their iPods in the first two months of the year, including one case in which a 12-year-old boy armed with a pocketknife mugged two women less than 10 minutes apart.

A pair of robbers in San Jose recently struck 10 times in two weeks, stealing iPods and other music players from teenagers around high schools and malls, often at knifepoint, police say.

Michael Rodriguez, a sophomore at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, was mugged for his iPod last summer in a Marin City underpass by a 16-year-old boy who was later arrested. It was the second time Rodiguez's iPod had been stolen from him in less than a year.

"It was pretty much part of my left hand," said Rodriguez, 15. "I've been kind of paranoid since then. I don't carry around a lot of cash with me. I don't use an iPod anymore."

"He felt like they were his fault they were taken," said his mother, Alex Rodriguez. "I got him another one for Christmas, and he hasn't opened it. He won't touch it. It's sitting there in brand new packaging. He's like, 'I don't want to use it. Somebody will take it.' "

Berkeley police have been tracking iPod robberies -- a crime defined as one in which an item is stolen by force or threat of force -- since November, when the trend became obvious, Sgt. Mary Kusmiss said.

"We have seen an increase since last year," she said. "There are more (iPods) out in the community, and they're more visible in general than last year. They've become more popular."

San Francisco police began tracking iPod robberies in late 2004, about three years after the music players went on the market.

There were four reported iPod robberies in the city in the last several weeks of 2004, police said. In 2005, the first full year of tracking, there were 102. That number almost doubled to 193 in 2006. There were 28 in January and February, putting the city on pace for 168 this year.

On BART, one or two iPod robberies are reported on average per month, making up about 11 percent of all robberies on the system.

"It's an opportunity thing," spokesman Linton Johnson said. "The white earbuds are a dead giveaway that you're listening to an iPod."

Evan Winchester, 21, stopped using the factory-issued white headphones after hearing about iPod muggings in his Berkeley neighborhood. But the UC Berkeley senior still had his music player stolen out of his backpack earlier this year while he was in the bathroom during a bus trip to Santa Barbara.

The draw for thieves, Winchester said, seemed to be the thing that makes the devices so convenient for users: "They're portable to a fault."

Loftus agreed. "They are all very compact, they are all very valuable, and they're all very easy to sell once stolen," he said. "Most of them are sold on the street. We've long known that even law-abiding citizens will buy a $300 iPod for $20 or $30 on the streets."

Sometimes the thieves simply keep the devices for themselves, police said. Suspects in some cases have been identified when they were stopped carrying an iPod on which someone else's name appeared on the startup screen, or identifying information was engraved on the back, said Kusmiss, the Berkeley police sergeant.

People listening to music players are easy targets because they're distracted and usually can't hear somebody approaching, authorities said. Among the ways users can protect themselves, police say, are keeping iPods close to them, checking their surroundings in crowded places, and keeping the volume down so they can hear what's going on around them.

Officials for Apple, which produces the iPod, did not return calls seeking comment.

Several schools, including Tamalpais High School and Lincoln and Del Mar high schools in San Jose, have warned students about bringing the music players on campus, noting that youths are often the victims of iPod thefts.

Virtually all the iPod robberies that Berkeley police tracked from November to mid-February occurred within three blocks of a school, a police analysis shows.

Because youths are victimized more often, police believe the number of iPod thefts may be underreported.

"Kids report it as lost as opposed to stolen because they're afraid to tell their parents they brought it somewhere they shouldn't have," such as school, Foster City police Capt. Jon Froomin said.

Teenagers made up the bulk of victims in a recent rash of iPod thefts in San Jose, where police arrested two men, ages 18 and 19, this week in connection with robberies since Feb. 28 around Lincoln and Del Mar high schools, Oakridge Mall and Santana Row. The two men allegedly used a knife and other unspecified weapons to rob youths walking alone in the afternoon, police said.

Such thefts have not been limited to the Bay Area. Los Angeles and New York also have recorded increases in iPod robberies in recent years; in July 2005, 15-year-old Christopher Rose was stabbed to death in Brooklyn during an iPod robbery.

In San Francisco, police run sting operations where an undercover officer conspicuously listens to an iPod in public while other officers wait to swoop in on would-be thieves.

During one operation on a Municipal Railway bus about six months ago, a group of girls approached a female undercover officer as the bus neared a stop, Loftus said. One of the girls grabbed the officer's iPod and ran, but other plainclothes police stopped her before she could get away.

"The crowd on the bus stood up," Loftus said, "and gave the officers a standing ovation."

Don't be a victim: Ways to reduce robbery risk

-- Be alert while wearing headphones. Keep the volume low enough to hear people approaching. Look behind you now and then and pay attention to others around you.